


Sects, Blood, and Rock n' Roll

by completetheory



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Mild Language, Other, Queer Friendly, Trans Female Character, Trans Friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-23 00:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30046860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completetheory/pseuds/completetheory
Summary: When Nines figures out Jack's plan ahead of time, he is not happy. A timely warning, a little light discussion. Two leaders of two factions that ideologically ought to be closer.
Relationships: Sebastian LaCroix/Nines Rodriguez
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Sects, Blood, and Rock n' Roll

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadScientific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadScientific/gifts).



Elysium's peace shattered with Smiling Jack's jaw. His teeth hit the floor, and then Jack was on his assailant with an animalistic snarl. His humanity hung by a thread as it was, and it took three Anarchs to pull him off Nines, bloodied and shaking with rage. 

"Get out! Get the fuck out!" 

The better part of valor was discretion. Jack knew if he killed Nines - well, it would be easy. But he would have trouble leaving L.A. peacefully. Jack slurred, "You're making a big fucking mistake--"

"Out!" Nines bellowed, lunging against Skelter's arms as if eager to continue his progress breaking in Jack's face. 

"Fine!" On the way out, Jack punched the jukebox, and the music wound down in the silence, soft whispers of discomfort, the locals handling the out-and-out bite much worse than their usual barking. Nines shrugged off offers of help, headed back upstairs, but a few minutes later had slipped out the back window, dropping soundlessly to the ground and prowling away through the alley.

He wasn't worried about being jumped by Jack, and he needn't have been, either. The Elder was long gone, but the memory of what he'd said - what he'd _done_ \- remained. More than anything, Nines hated to be manipulated, and it had come out in careful dribs, the odd comment here. Testing the water. 

Nines was outside Ventrue Tower before he realized, and inside before he could think better of it. He wasn't expecting to be admitted, but it looked, from the CCTV, that LaCroix hadn't expected to see him, and the Prince's curiosity outweighed any past grudge, for the moment.

"Don't open that." Nines said, by way of greeting, gesturing to the sarcophagus, "It's a fucking bomb." 

That was one way to get LaCroix's attention. She exchanged a look with the Fledgling, who had become so close to her in these past few weeks that she was considering official Childe-Sire proceedings. 

LaCroix drew Ventrue certainty around herself like a tattered cloak. "If it is a bomb," She briefly entertained the notion, "Why would you, of all people, warn us?" 

"Because Anarchs get the blame while Smiling Jack skips town and the next Camarilla they send don't even pretend to like us." Nines leaned on the sarcophagus, as unbothered as if it were a coffee table, "That ignorant ahole nearly screwed us all." 

LaCroix folded her hands behind her back, mainly to stop them visibly trembling. "Not ignorant, I'm afraid." She corrected that absently, "Jack wants to cause as much suffering as possible. Truly to provoke - the end of times." 

Her Fledgling, a young Nosferatu, crouched nearby and evaluated the sarcophagus with new concern, but not for their own skin. It looked like they had concerns for Nines and LaCroix both, but it was gratifying to be believed, at least.

"Great. He sure stuck around Elysium long enough before the plan slipped. I broke his face and came to tell you." 

LaCroix mouthed _'broke his'_ in a sort of daze, and then concluded, "My thanks for the warning, then."

"You're welcome." 

Silence. No one of the three looked to want to break the fragile peace that suddenly existed here, between previously contentious sects.

"Can I offer you a drink?" LaCroix asked, after a short time that felt an eternity. 

Nines blinked. "What, I'm not joining your team, just because I don't want you dead." 

As with all of Nines' somewhat befuddled, worried opinions that soon blossomed into defensive anger, it was necessary to fill in a great many blanks in between what he said, and what he may have meant. 

"Kine blood. I have no desire to repay your help with an enforced bloodbond. And even if I did, we no longer do this in healthy Camarilla cities. I don't know what you experienced, but it was not how I run things. Ask Sunday."

The Nosferatu smiled with teeth like a trash compactor, and Nines half smiled back, unable to help it.

"Yeah, this kid thinks the world of you." Nines considered, "And... doesn't seem bloodwashed." 

'Bloodwashed' was another thing that very nearly made LaCroix echo it, in a curious but clipped fashion. She became professional again, "If what you say about the sarcophagus is true, I do not need the Primogen to agree to a bloodhunt on Jack. Attempting to assassinate a Prince directly is reason enough. However..."

"He's probably skipped town." Nines finished her thought. "Yeah. If he's smart."

"You actually hit him." LaCroix established again. 

Nines raised his eyebrows. "Is that surprising?" 

The Ventrue stood, very interested in Nines' face suddenly, and the scrutiny made him look away as if embarrassed. "I think you can hold your temper when you wish to, Mr. Rodriguez."

Nines looked noncommittal. "You've been here for a year. I don't want to trade you for someone worse. And I don't want Isaac in charge of L.A. Or Xiao - the Kuei-Jin really started being impossible to live with when she showed up." 

All those ideas did little to distract LaCroix from the thrust of the main topic, "I shall satisfy myself that I am high enough in your esteem to be better than any randomly selected Camarilla Prince, then. I owe you a great deal for your warning." 

"Nah." Perhaps aware of being deliberately contrary, Nines added, "You showed up and didn't kill us all. You got Xiao off our backs and stuck around. If it's any way, it's me who still owes you." 

Nines did accept blood, in the end. He just bolted it down like someone unaccustomed to good quality anything, and made his goodbyes. He left the Fledgling - endlessly grateful to him for helping LaCroix - with the chore of disposing of the sarcophagus. Ultimately LaCroix decided to x-ray it, and have Strauss check it afterward with auspex, and both tests did confirm Nines' warning. It was supremely tempting to give it to Isaac Abrams, with Ming Xiao dead, Archbishop Andrei missing in action (probably dead), and Gary Golden a quite low profile target, but in good faith she could not kill the Baron and leave Hollywood worse off. So she had the sarcophagus taken to a warehouse some thirty miles away, and Bertram Tung contacted a bomb squad with an anonymous tip. 

Let the humans deal with it. There was nothing on the nightly news about terrorism, and no way for the attempt to actually breach Masquerade rules and be traceable to a supernatural entity, so the kine had done all right. That left LaCroix without a bargaining chip to keep everyone from trying to murder or oust her, but she has Sunday, who had become something of a giant killer, so it worked out.

Nines stayed away a few nights, as if worried about what he might have unleashed. Nothing happened. LaCroix maintained her patience, and the next time Nines arrived, it was on his own terms, and much less upset than before.

It occurred to Nines that he didn't need to make an appointment. That whatever LaCroix was doing up there, to the tune of running an entire city's Masquerade and managing individual Kindred's grievances on a variety of topics, was reshuffled to make time for him. 

"Good evening." This time LaCroix greeted him, and with the kind of calm that proved she had anticipated this meeting and prepared better for it. "Please take a seat." 

Nines drew up a chair, backward, and sat on it, leaning his arms on the high back and squinting at her. "I hope this isn't a lecture. That's not what I came for."

LaCroix, who had inhaled to say something, exhaled in the manner of a Kindred who drew breath habitually in close congress with the living, the better to be their imitator. She folded her hands on the desk. "Then, by all means. Tell me why you are here, Mr. Rodriguez."

Nines collected himself. "I'm here to tell you I'm sorry for the way I acted toward you for the last year. I jumped to a lot of conclusions about you. Said a lot of shitty things. Threatened your life at least as often as you wanted to threaten mine, I'm pretty sure."

The Ventrue's shoulders, already high, lifted slightly higher, and she blinked a few times, letting the silence settle like new snow around them, pristine and gentle. 

"I have no trouble forgiving you." LaCroix said, and it was heartfelt. "I have been under the impression for some time now that Smiling Jack told you a great many half truths and complete lies about the Camarilla, the better to further his own agenda against it. I have my own reservations and misgivings - my own critiques - about a system that was left to rot for so long that the Anarchs needed to rise up in order to oust its Prince, because its Primogen failed." 

All that rolled over Nines and he leaned back to contemplate, as LaCroix continued.

"I am equally sorry for my dismissal of you after you rejected my offer to become Brujah Primogen. Since that early point, I made no efforts to understand why or explain to you anything that may have been misconstrued. As Ventrue, the induction of our clan to the Camarilla as a working entity is ... so complete, it is easy for me to forget not everyone experienced this. You are Caitiff, correct?" 

At Nines' somewhat baffled look, LaCroix elaborated, "You have no Sire." 

"Oh. I mean, I don't know em. So, yeah, if that's what that means." 

"Then you had little hope of recognizing the Camarilla as anything but a danger to you, and in that context, your reactions were fully appropriate." 

Nines closed his eyes a moment, nodding to something unsaid. "Yeah. Thanks, LaCroix. Where does this leave us?" 

"In, hopefully, a good place to move forward." Sebastian ran her hands idly over one another, "In my ideal scenario, you reconvene your Anarchs and explain to them that they can coexist, without fear of absorption or suppression, with the Camarilla, which can protect them in turn with aspects of the Masquerade they cannot finance or finagle. This quells opposition to my presence in Los Angeles, and strengthens my ability to react to threats against all Kindred." 

"You make it sound pretty good." Nines observed.

"And what is your ideal scenario, Mr. Rodriguez?" 

The Brujah rocked back again, balanced on the chair's back-facing front legs. "You call me Nines. I call you 'Prince' - if you agree you're not exactly my Prince, and you might never be. If I have a problem with what you do, I come talk to you and I don't get two-faced promises... or left in the lurch down there on the ground if someone shows up with beef against you." 

"I assure you," LaCroix started, and then her brain caught up with the requests, the real implication of that last, "I would not ask for your protection if anyone outside of Los Angeles wanted to harm me, specifically." 

"You'd get it, though." 

LaCroix could think of no real answer to that, in the heat of the moment, and settled on, "Good. --Nines, then. I can make your scenario happen, to a point. 'Two-faced promises' is somewhat... ambiguous."

Nines showed his teeth in a smile, as if this was something he'd been waiting on. LaCroix shook her head to clear it, or to indicate she didn't mean what he had assumed. 

"Understand that, as Prince of this Domain, I serve many masters. The Primogen all have their own desires, and I must pacify those, or be voted down as unfit. If Justicars arrive, I must genuflect, and explain myself to them. If enemies such as the Kuei-Jin offer truce conditions... Yes, I see from your face you don't believe any of their promises, and I do agree, but I must lead with a view to stability." 

A pause. "Smiling Jack hates the Camarilla because he wishes for power for its own sake. Not power to make a better life for others, or even for himself. Power, leading to suffering, leading to the destruction of everything we have worked for." 

Nines had heard Jack in the Last Round talking quite a bit, and while his mind had been somewhat cloudy when Jack offered him a drink, he distinctly remembered still being dissatisfied, listening. 

"He's a piece of shit." Nines concluded.

He said it so readily, with so much understanding and feeling, that LaCroix opened her mouth, closed it, and then decided she had to ask. 

"Did he 'bloodwash' you? Is that why you were so incensed and unreasoning at Elysiums before, in my presence - and so calm and receptive around my Fledgling when they came to see you in Griffith Park? Whenever Jack was near you, it seems, you ...were so oppositional to a Camarilla you barely understood." 

Nines blinked. "I guess it's possible. But I mostly think he's a piece of shit because he doesn't care about us, but he pretends to. MacNeil hates him, too."

"MacNeil has excellent taste." LaCroix murmured. "Though I must allow that he would dislike me, as well. Most Anarchs do; that is your function. You keep the Camarilla in check. It would be easier if you liked me, of course... but you don't seem to realize what your ideal situation is, is also what we were designed to do, since the Convention of Thorns. The Anarchs who did not agree to work with the Camarilla and compromise became the Sabbat."

From Nines' expression, no Sire also meant no history lessons, and Jack hadn't seen fit to get into any nitty gritty that might betray his own desire for discord. Nines nodded, after a momentary hesitation. He didn't like the Sabbat much, and even he could admit that they did seem like the Anarchs' 'love of freedom & lack of supervision' taken to the logical excess. Enough time, and someone like Isaac Abrams stepped up to take over.

"I don't like telling people what to do." Nines admitted. "Or being in charge. I don't trust people who want that, because most of them want to be in charge for crooked reasons." 

"You were brought up in the 1920s." LaCroix continued to navigate rather cautiously, "Or, I suppose, became an adult then, shortly before your Embrace to contest the Domain of Don Sebastian. You saw a great deal of kine corruption, and it is also reasonable you assumed our world is no different. Perhaps even worse. We ourselves suffer from this terrible bias - we call it 'humanity' when we behave well or badly. 'Humane' treatment of others... but I promise you we are no worse than they. And if we, the Ventrue, seek command, it is only because we _must_ remain secret. You know as well as I do what kine do to those even of their own race who they perceive as alive, who are 'different'. They would kill us all." 

"I know that. Anarchs don't disagree on the Masquerade." Nines said, pointedly, "We're pretty good about it."

"Indeed. But you _do_ feel there should be no 'state'. No governing body enforcing Traditions. And certainly no millionaire Kindred. Yes?" 

Nines tilted his head expectantly, and she took it as tacit permission to continue. 

"Without those things, the Masquerade on a global scale would collapse. And once the airplane and the telegram and - help us all, the _internet_ came about... We lost any luxury we once had of not having a centralized Kindred society that guides individuals and discourages them from transgressing. You said you don't want Isaac in charge. I agree, but for different reasons; people like him give leadership a bad name. A leader is servant to the people. All their influence, wealth, and time, ought to be spent in protecting those who are in their charge." 

LaCroix folded her hands. 

"You really believe that." Nines queried, quietly. "Weren't you in Napoleon's army?" 

"The Grande Armée. Yes." LaCroix indicated, "A selling point only for those who don't know their history. Without going too deeply into it, and with the benefit of hindsight, the entire world - kine and Kindred alike - would be better off if military minded men did not rule nations, or have any input on their governance whatsoever."

Nines was so astonished to hear that, he actually laughed, showing full fang, and then sobered up again after a beat, "Thanks, Prince."

"...What for?" 

Nines got up, "For convincing me I wasn't wrong to tip you about the bomb. Call me crazy, but I think we can work together." 

"--then--" LaCroix stood, as well, "I look forward to a fruitful alliance, Nines."


End file.
